ASP MVC: When is IController Dispose() called?
asp.net-mvc, garbage-collection, idisposable, linq-to-sql
Solution
Dispose is called after the view is rendered, always.
The view is rendered in the call to `ActionResult.ExecuteResult`. That's called (indirectly) by `ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAction`, which is in turn called by `ControllerBase.ExecuteCore`.
Since the controller is in the call stack when the view is rendered, it cannot be disposed then.
Problem
I'm going through a big refactoring / speed tweaking of one of my larger MVC apps. It has been deployed to production for a few months now, and I was starting to get timeouts waiting for connections in the connection pool. I have tracked the issue down to the connections not getting disposed properly. In light of that, I have since made this change to my base controller: ``` public class MyBaseController : Controller { private ConfigurationManager configManager; // Manages the data context. public MyBaseController() { configManager = new ConfigurationManager(); } protected override void Dispose(bool disposing) { if (disposing) { if (this.configManager != null) { this.configManager.Dispose(); this.configManager = null; } } base.Dispose(disposing); } } ``` Now, I have two questions: - Am I introducing a race condition? Since the `configManager` manages the `DataContext` that exposes `IQueryable<>` parameters to the views, I need to make sure that `Dispose()` will not be called on the controller before the view finishes rendering. - Does the MVC framework call `Dispose()` on the Controller before or after the view is rendered? Or, does the MVC framework leave that up to the GarbageCollector?